The government's double-standard concerning environment

Spectrum, by Patricia Wade

When I walk around my little town of Palmer on a beautiful sunny day, all my senses feel good and happy. I love to see the awesome mountains, greenery everywhere and the cheerful fields of dandelions.

I was a child of the '60s. But I wasn't a hippie or a drug addict. All I know is I used to get a euphoric feeling being out in nature. I didn't realize how it affected me until one day in 1965 someone asked me "What are you on?" Then I knew it had to be the wonders of nature. Alaska was young and healthy and so was I. It felt safe to stop by any waterfall or creek I came across and take a drink of the cold, rushing water.

It has become all too clear about pollution and what's been happening to the Earth. Garbage is dumped and hidden everywhere. My dad was a civilian employee for the Air Force 30 years ago, before environmental organizations were watching the government's disastrous ways. He went out to remote sites like King Salmon, Shemya and Galena and cleaned up toxic messes the government left behind. Dad got leukemia and his case was so rare he made it into some medical books. My dad died at the young age of 58 in 1980. That age sounds especially young to me now, seeings that's how old I'll be in two months.

The world's oceans and the marine life it harbors are collapsing. A major study in "Nature" last month reported that fully 90 percent of large, predatory fish populations, including tuna and marlin, have disappeared, mostly due to over-fishing and destructive fishing methods. Other threats, such as coastal development, pollution and climate change, are also devastating marine life.

It's times like this when my one-quarter Athabascan really feels aligned with Chief Seattle's quotes. Like when he said, "Every part of all this soil is sacred to my people. Every hillside, every valley, every plain and grove has been hollowed by some sad or happy event in days long vanished… We know that the white man does not understand our ways. One portion of the land is the same to him as the next, for he is a stranger who comes in the night and takes from the land whatever he needs. The Earth is not his brother, but his enemy -- and when he has conquered it, he moves on…"

Within nature, the sounds of every frog, bird, insect, breeze and brook combine to make a harmonic overtone of the sound current. There are far too many places now where we can no longer hear frogs or crickets because they have all been destroyed or blacktopped over.

As a world we have gotten ourselves so far out of harmony that when we discover something like nuclear energy, we are still capable of putting it into a bomb and using it to kill people.

Chickaloon Village has our fish wheel in operation for our subsistence foods. And the politicians have decreed that we are supposed to get a state permit.

How can those same type of politicians who sanctioned dumping toxic poisons all over the place … and then sent innocent people clean it up … be wise enough for us to want to ask permission from them for our sustenance?

We are concerned about toxic chemicals by wind and water currents from all over the world. We're trying to keep politicians from allowing Ariel spraying of pesticides. We have asked the state of Alaska to not allow people to be deliberately poisoned by these toxic chemicals.

Come to think of it the words "politician" and "pollution" sound way too much alike. Maybe it's time to stop this "political pollution!"

Patricia Wade is editor of The Chickaloon News.